Guest essay by Eric Worrall.
JoNova reports on a hilarious error in Lewandowsky’s paper “The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science” . The calculated age of survey respondents has reportedly been skewed by one “outlier” who claimed to have been born in the palaeolithic, 32,757 years ago.
Raw data – line 607, http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/PLOSONE2013Data.csv
Lewandowsky was informed of this error over a year ago – and has reportedly done nothing to address this glaring problem with his calculations and conclusion.
According to Jo Nova;
“Lewandowsky, Gignac and Oberauer put out a paper in 2013 which was used to generate headlines like āClimate sceptics more likely to be conspiracy theoristsā. The data sample is not large, but despite that, it includes the potential Neanderthal, as well as a precocious five year old and some underage teenagers too. The error was reported on Lewandowskyās blog over a year ago by Brandon Shollenberger, then again by Jose Duarte in August 2014. Nothing has been corrected. The ages are not just typos, they were used in the calculations, correlations and conclusions. The median age was 43 but the mean age was a flaming neon 76. One wildly old person in the data skewed the correlation for age with nearly everything:
That one data point ā the paleo-participant ā is almost single-handedly responsible for knocking out all the correlations between age and so many other variables. If you just remove the paleo-participant, leaving the minors in the data, age lights up as a correlate across the board. Further removing the kids will strengthen the correlations.”
Worst of all, the bad data has apparently led to a demonstrably erroneous conclusion. According to Jose Duarte,
“This would be a serious problem in any context. We cannot have minors or paleo-participants in our data, in the data we use for analyses, claims, and journal articles. It’s even more serious given that the authors analyzed the age variable, and reported its effects. They state in their paper:
— “Age turned out not to correlate with any of the indicator variables.”
This is grossly false. It can only be made true if we include the fake data. If we remove the fake data, especially the 32,757-year-old, age correlates with most of their variables. It correlates with six of their nine conspiracy items, and with their “conspiracist ideation” combined index. It also correlates with views of vaccines ā a major variable in their study. See the graph below.”
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/how-one-paleo-participant-can-change-the-outcome-of-a-study
Lets hope that Lewandowsky finally takes action to correct the error, and amends the erroneous conclusion of his paper, which is inferred from Lewandowsky’s analysis of the grossly defective data. Of course, while he’s at it, I’m sure we could suggest a few other defects with Lewandowsky’s work which he could correct.
For what it is worth, 32,757 is one off the size a small integer in computer science which is 32,767…
Ten off? I suggested on Jo’s page the cause might have been a birth date erroneously entered for 11 years in the future with the low 15 bits (why not 16?) saved in the database.
It could also be a valid response from a very prescient ovum.
Ric, you’re only half correct, you’ve neglected the requisite spermatozoon
Possibly last bit determines -ve number if set to 1. Also 15 bits may include 0 which would actually = 16 bits 0 to 15
Yes, 10 off. Brain not fully engaged before my morning walk…
It’s a time traveller come back to laugh at Lewandowsky!
Bit-ters are good before walks..You must have a very large bit bucket..Har-dee har har..
int( -11) == uint(32757). Age = Round(current_date – birth_date). If someone entered their birth year as current_year + 10, a single digit error or if the entrant was born in 2000 + something and flubbed the decade digit, this would result. The first case would require two mistakes on the part of the entrant, the second, one mistake on the part of a preteen entrant. Any other scenario would seem to indicate fraud ( too many error needed to create).
DesertYote
If 10 years old, that would be current year – 10. Not current year + 10.
if about 20 years old (born in between 1993 and 1994 for example) that would still be current year -20
RACook,
What does that have to do with what I posted? I said “flubbed a digit”, sheesh.
What is the job of peer review?
To enforce the consensus?
Who did the peer reviews? (These should be three “qualified” climate scientists, right?)
Plus the senior “qualified” editor who selected those three people, plus the (junior) editor who did the physical reading and editing of the paper itself.
But, of course, anonymous star-panel “peer review” is the absolute guarantee of accuracy and unbiased results in climate science scientific papers, isn’t it?
when you’re a member of the Church of CAGW, you suggest reviewers who are also blindly-adherent true believers.
note: When you submit a paper to PLoS, you submit names of suggested reviewers, and also of research area “competitors” who might be adverse. It is up to the reviewing editor then to use judgement in assigning at least two reviewers who can objectively review it.
Jimbo, I think looncraz has the answer.
What a strange notion. Reviewers haven’t got time to check the actual data!! They’ve got a world to save dontchyaknow.
As long as it smells right…..https://hro001.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/phil-jones-keeps-peer-review-process-humming-by-using-intuition/
If the “scientist” doesn’t care about the data, why should the reviewer?
/sarc
A peer reviewer is a peer — a scientists in the same field or with some knowledge of the subject — who reviews a paper. If you’ve published in the subject area before, the editor might ask you to review a paper but I don’t think an editor ever pays for a peer review. If you work for someone who will let you review the paper while you’re “on the clock” then you could paid to do the review. In my experience, it’s a professional courtesy. You review other papers because someone had to review yours. Usually the reviewer will make some recommendations about how the paper could be made better, more clear but they could recommend against publishing; seems like that is what should have happened in this case. I don’t think it’s normal for a reviewer to look closely at the raw data but I would if the conclusions seemed odd or unsupported. It’s a “review” of the paper, one is not expected to run the experiment and see if one gets the same results.
One peer reviewer could have been his colleague in the Psych Dept at UWA, Prof. Carmen Lawrence, a warmist former Labor Party Premier in Western Australia.
“Peer review” is based on the assumption that the reviewers are at least equally knowledgeable as the author(s). The system is therefore vulnerable because the reviewers may not be.
The whole AGW farce will go down in history as a textbook example of a massive infarct of the review system.
A short integer which is 16bits has the range of 0-65536 if unsigned and
-32768 to 32767 if signed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fellow whindid that survey did a bit of programming in his life.
The largest number you can fit into a 16-bit unsigned integer is actually 65535. There are 65536 possibilities but that includes zero. š
Anyway, I think the explanation below and elsewhere that it’s a full date of birth (March 27, 1957) is probably the answer. Next they’ll be calculating TCR by multiplying by the change in anthro forcing instead of dividing. š
More likely someone entered DoB (032757) instead of age – an American, since the rest of the world don’t start with the month.
Well the link to the original dataset / paper within the above article as linked here:
http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/PLOSONE2013Data.csv
Seems to have been removed. Any theories as to why this might have happened? or am I being too conspiratorial in assuming it has been removed to hide the evidence?
The PLoS link is now reporting “Not Found” as well.
One can hope that this post is the proximate factor…
… In which case; Congratulations Mr. Worrall & Watts!
OK, now the download link is working. Maybe I rushed to a conspiracy,or……
The PLoS link, the “official” published paper, is still Not Found. This is the first link at the top of the Post.
ā the 32,757-year-old paleo-participant ā
That’s no way to talk of my mother !!!
…in-law.
+1!
The participant has been found. Hurray.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/images/1008/neanderthal-woman-200-109116-1.jpg
Sou might object to you posting her picture.
I’m trying to figure out what she’s holding.
Iām trying to figure out what sheās holding.”
A broken hockey stick
A scapula. From her former boyfriend.
A birch bark Erlenmeyer flask.
You know, some things can never be unseen!
Maybe that’s an old guy cave-man with Mann-boobs?
ManBearPiG!!
I think Lew is right keeping the paleodata. The great wisdome of Ćtzi’s bigbigbigbigbigibigbigbig,etc-brother tops any opinion coming from present living, minor or not.
But Ćtzi lost a serious game of ‘Cowboys & Indians’.
How can a loser be a serious role model for anything (except dodge those arrows).
As for his (putative) bigbigbig (etc to the fortieth power, squared) brother – not a lot of common DNA.
That said, I agree that our Best Buddie Forever, Lew [Doctor, good with animals and small children, and the rest – I assume], may need to review, adjust and re-publicize his – ahhh – ‘data’.
Auto
A 32,757 year old sounds about as right as the rest of their data. Maybe it’s the candles on his birthday cake that is contributing to AGW!
Sorta has the Frank Zappa stare. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FceUcTWLL._SY355_.jpg
Maybe J Z Knight was the respondent, channeling Ramtha.
“This is grossly false. It can only be made true if we include the fake data. If we remove the fake data, especially the 32,757-year-old, age correlates with most of their variables.”
Ah yes, she of many accents, and very skilled in charging huge sums for bunkers in anticipation of lizard hominid invasion. 35,000 years old. Perhaps we have a match.
She & Loony Loo are a match made in Lalaland.
Wow, 32,757 years old! That beats Mel Brooks’ 2000 year-old man by a long shot. Oy!
I’m just glad I am not around his birthday cake when they light the candles, it would be like Ash Wednesday.
Too funny……
So many people here complain when the raw data is “adjusted”
When it isn’t “adjusted” they make fun of the raw data.
When the data are so obviously, hilariously, false, adjusted or not, they deserve to be made fun of.
Kind of like when a station temperature in San Diego shows -57 degrees F ?
Clearly bogus data cannot be “adjusted” (whatever it means), it needs to be
1) explicitly flagged
2) thrown away
Then, there is the question of how much other, less obvious crap in the data…
eg, the 5 yo.
What we want is correct data. We don’t want adjustments without explanations, and we don’t want data that clearly incorrect, or for that matter data that is incorrect but not very clearly. If there is sensible and logical reason for adjustments we are fine with that, but we want to know what those reasons are and what adjustments were made. That is why we insist on seeing the raw data. Without it there is no way of telling which corrections should be made, and which corrections should not be made.
Adjusted, it’s 65,514. Corrected, it’s 1.
I think 32,757 is too old to include in the data. Now if he had been only 1,000 years old…
I thought the upper bound on this was 969…..
David, I’m not too sure what your point is. Certainly some observed data is spurious. There is also a serious possible problem when committed activists are doing lots of “adjustments” to their data in the dark.
Does that mean there is some gray area here? Sure. Anybody with a brain sees that, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with jeering at either 32,000 year old respondents, or endless “adjustments” that always trend in the direction of a hockey stick.
There is an estimate in the comment above that corrects it to 10. Would you accept that as the real age or omit it along with the other 25%?
You can’t be that dense, this has nothing to do with adjusting data, the data is wrong. Worse the bad piece of data was from a small set of data and is easily caught and corrected (not adjusted).
Lews paper is a prime example why people are putting less and less faith in science.
Science is dead. What remains is a giant propaganda machine for tyrrany, paid for by money extorted from all of us.
That is exactly how I see it.
Je suis jorgeka….never mind. (:
Misused but not dead.
Science was never going to be without genitals or an anus. And never will be.
Like other institutions, it attracts folks of a certain make-up, and repels others. Like all institutions, it has its peculiar effects & affectations.
Fancy takes on the nature & reality of science are like the Nobel Savage.
It is neither all that awful, nor wonderful.
It was not included in the Constitution, and I submit that it certainly would not be, today. And if it was genuinely scary, or honestly our salvation, it would be front & center in Western Law. Yea or Nay. Instead, we have effete ‘best science directives’.
Luckily, it was peer reviewed. Otherwise a whole heap of rubbish might have gotten through
DC: You really need to understand the difference between ‘adjusted’ and ‘corrected’.
Interesting. I opened the data file “http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/PLOSONE2013Data.csv” in Excel, and found the “Age” in column AO. The forrmula “=MAX(AO2:AO1002)” then calculates the max age in the list as “32757”.
I’d be interested in the source of this obviously-wrong number, because it would probably tell us a lot about the quality of the other values in the spreadsheet.
I think they need to multiply by the square root of -1 to correct for all of the other imaginary data…
The fact that it’s 10 away from 32767 (zero-indexed) is pretty fishy, almost like someone stuck a
test outlier in there and no-one fixed it or some algorithm hit a bounds condition. Either way, there’s
no excuse for missing something so far out of range, especially in a “scholarly” study.
It’s pretty obvious they didn’t “study” the data very well.
I would have asked a 32,767 yo how hot was it where he lived when he was a boy and a few other questions about sea level etc… plus if a paleo diet really does work!
A 32,767 must have something to say about climate scares.
The 32767 years old person’s gender is marked as 2, which I presume is a Female !
I wouldn’t be so sure. I suspect that she wasn’t 32767 either. Women lie about their age.
Given his age and the fact he is still in good enough shape to answer this survey, I would count that as very strong evidence paleo works exceptionally well.
How many more skeletons will be found in the cupboards of scientists?
This paper, the analysis of the data, the validity of the conclusions and the quality of the pal review process meets the standard used in climate science – so there’s no problem. Nothing to see here.
The thing is my friends, that we are always playing by their rules in this political war. This cretin gets the juicy headlines and then later when we find out about how terrible the study really was. Long after the propaganda damage is done; we discover the travesty that is the “study”. Hell, look at how long the “97% consensus” has held on.
In watching this subject since the “new ice age is coming” days, I have come to believe that science went way wrong in buying into the Jim Hansen theory of CO2 and its supposed effects. The whole thing needs to be redone — a fresh start. But that, my friends, can not happen as long as the government is controlling funding and handing out billions and billions of “free money”. The guy who pays the piper gets to call the tune and we all know what that tune is.
You get it, Mark. Never, negotiate with rules set by your opposition to suit themselves … always seek to have the paradigm to your advantage. Arguing ‘science’ is a waste of time when policy makers, political elites, have already appropriated the junk science for their own ends. Hell, everybody knows that the ‘science’ is junk.
The explanation could be quite simple. The respondent put his birthdate in the age column. He may have been born on March 27, 1957
Likely explanation. . . but it also points out the abysmally inept attempt to processing the data that renders the entire paper meaningless.
My guess as well. And yes, it does indicate the abysmal level of the data processing in the paper.
In Excel, set up for the UK, the numeric value ‘32767’ resolves to ’16 September 1989′ when formatted as a date. It might be that date of birth (and an another case of ‘expert scientists’ not knowing how to use Excel.)
Only if they were American…
10 below signed int overflow limit.
Ha ha
Who uses two byte integers these days? Didn’t they go out of style with the 80386 ?
Those who are limited to 64 KB?
SMALLINT in SQL, PIC 9(1) to PIC 9(4) in COBOL, FIXED BIN(15) in PL/I, short in C, C++, C#, and Java, and probably a few uses that I’ve forgotten. You need to get with the program (so to speak).
Embedded and microcontrollers. Robotics.
If you know the data is going to fit into the size of an int, you generally don’t use something larger. You might be processing millions of these values. You don’t take up more resources than necessary in good design. Computer chips have instruction sets that works with these “machine” size values.
The CSV file is text though isn’t it? If I write “1” , I typed a ASCII value of 49 (decimal), a char character “1”. In other words its considered as text and parsed by an algorithm into its number form when required.
garymount
Most of today’s CPU’s are of a 32 or 64 bit design and access their memory systems in word fashion. So technically, loading and storing a 2 byte integer is a waste of resources (i.e memory bandwidth.)
Primary or Level 1 cache typically range from 2 kilobytes (KB) and 64 KB, which is why you don’t unnecessarily bloat your data.
Access width on the caches is still in word lengths.
And all data reads and writes still have to thru the caches ant go to main memory.
#NeandertalLivesMatter2
Lew embraces dieversity!
GW – and so, why does the paper’s author go ahead and usethis crap ?
Because that let him dismiss correlation with age of respondent, which would have overwhelmed the alleged skeptic correlation. Not part of the narrative, ya know.
I hope it was peer reviewed.
I think it was pal reviewed.
Probably beer reviewed by a pal.
On those mornings I wake up feeling really old, I’ll just think of this paleo-dude and realize I don’t have a thing to complain about. š
I, too, will do that.
If I can remember . . . .
Auto
I wonder if his hips are as creaky as mine. š
This might be useful. Can we get good historic data from this one individual that can be used in further climate research? If they kept good notes about temps., CO2 concentration, sea levels, solar radiation, cloud cover, etc. there might be much to learn.
Don’t miss the significance of the children in the sample.
It is unethical to exploit minors. The permission of the parent or guardian is needed.
Did the Journal and University check that?
Or do the UWA and University of Exeter not really care much about child welfare?
What’s the name? Sasndusky? Something like that
Isn’t Sadnasty in the State Penn?
He bet Lew obtained preemptive white-wash (written by Lew) from the U and its “Research Ethics Committee”.
Lew studied Lew research behaviour, concluded Lew was a saint.
Yet another example of the “amateur hour” aspect of all of Lewandowsky et al work. Significant errors in data collection, methodology, interpretation of prior data, ethics, and more.
Alleged “explanations” – such as the ridiculous use of Skeptical Science poster data to ‘justify’ Lewandowsky obtaining virtually all of the Moon Landing Hoax data from sites highly biased against skeptics. When in reality NONE of the data was obtained thru the SkS site – AND where their analysis of internet traffic data showed a complete cluelessness – no connection with reality or fact.
It is well known that ages ending with 0, and 5 are most common in census data of rural communities (see http://ijphjournal.it/article/download/5630/5372)
The age data in this paper had a different problem, they were all synthetic. The digits 0,1,2 & 4 were used 25% times more than the others. In a normally distributed population of 1000 samples you should not expect to find differences more than 1-2%. This systematic overuse of these digits is a consequence of how digits are laid out on a typical keyboard.
I am not suggesting that the authors had their fingers on the keyboard, but who knows?
Out of a total of 1000 “people” in the list.
So, is the 5 year old also a valid data point?
Do four 14 or 15 year old children know enough to provide “policy information” that is cited when trillions of dollars of government spending is being invoked?
I am not disputing what you are saying. But, just highlighting that the age data were not real but synthetic.
You cannot have sampled a bunch of people in 30, 31, 32, 34 years of age but miss the 33 years old ones in a truly random pickings.
However, if your fingers on the left side of the numeric keypad, that is what you’ll end up with.
Lew just made the age data up, god knows he used the same trick in the other columns too.
8.5% of the data are ages with the same two digits. Not too far off of 10%.
The subjects were provided by the outfit who hosted the survey. According to the paper, they were chosen (obviously by a computer program) to satisfy certain requirements:
I doubt that such selections would be made by random methods which could account for the digit oddities in the sample.
Thank you for this possible explanation. Yet, I doubt the randomization functions in these algorithms are so poor to provide a footprint of their algorithms.
Regardless, the data in question are the ages of the participants. I would think the order number, ID number or other function would be the output of their algorithm but not the age since the former would contained all the access information to the participants.
I should stress the randomness test of digits is a well validated tool to detect synthetic data. In this aspect, Lew has failed, the age data is synthetic.
Age would be one of the factors actually used in the selection process in order to create a “representative” sample of individuals so the ages would definitely not be a simple random sample selected from the population available.
The effect on the distribution of the digits would depend on the specific algorithm used.
Roman, you are misunderstanding the point.
The respondents should be completely random. You don’t filter people out based on age except to remove impossibilities. That’s throwing away good data for no reason. A representative sample is accomplished by creating age divisions and analyzing the groups, not by deleting data. Either they filtered people out based on their age or the data is fake. Either way,
I have been extremely skeptical about this study since the beginning since the anonymous design is optimum for trolling. Lew might not have made this data up, but I’m fairly sure that many of his respondents did.
This would also explain the Neanderthal. Someone either put in a stupidly high age or a “-10”. I’m thinking the latter as the relation to the top of the short-int value is unlikely to be random, but it’s so obscure that it’s unlikely as a deliberate joke.
If we could ask anyone 32k years ago if they are global warming d3ni3ers, and they would have just wondered what warmth was.
‘amends the erroneous conclusion of his paper,’
if he did that for all of them , would there be anything left ?
Lew by name , Lew paper by nature the only real question is 2 or 3 ply
That he is a ‘star ‘ of the climate ‘science’ area , along with Mann, tell us much about the area itself.
Clearly, one-ply … he keeps getting his finger in sh8 data.
Let me guess. The 32,757 year old survey participant’s name is Treebeard and his home is in Yamal.
It is obviously falsified: There is no note or explanation about the “missing days” caused by the Julian date Gregorian date calender change, nor the “year 0” error induced by the assignment of the AD/BC years in the first place. Thus, a person born 32,757 years ago has NOT loved 32,757 years since his birth.
/sarchasm – That gaping whole between a liberal and real life.
Are you saying s/he is a hater (or maybe picture that Jimbo’s provided has biased your view of her ability to find love), or is it just that the finger on your right hand next to right ponky is a little overactive? š
The fact that so many other scientists tolerate this nonsense without laughing it off the stage is the real tragedy. Science is beginning to deserve the bad rap it’s getting these days. Publication and peer review are turning into a joke.
Have turned. For more examples, see essays A High Stick Foul, By Land or By Sea, and Burning NonScience in Blowing Smoke: essays on energy and climate.
In climate science, data is only bad, if it doesn’t support your conclusion.
Hypothesis: People I Dislike, and Who Disagree with Me, Are Just Really Awful You Guys
It’s the science equivalent of an ad for a Klan rally.
A lot of politicians are corrupt, a lot of auto mechanics are corrupt, and a lot of scientists are corrupt. The difference is the cultural bias against the third fact, which needs to end before that corruption comes under even vague control.
Not that the first two are under control… tilting at windmills, perhaps.
The Lew problem is worse if you read Jose Duarte’s post and Brandon Shollenberger’s comments at Lucia’s.
The web survey service Lew used has a simple dashboard for each input. For age, it is NOT an input birthday as some posters have presumed above. It is a simple input age, where the dash allows to exclude ( e.g. 80) respondents. Obviously, no setting was used and somebody either spoofed or goofed. Utterly irresponsible. Jose has the dashboard screen shot, since he uses the same service for his Ph.D.
But even worse is Lew not QCing the SI data in his own Excel spreadsheet. Shades of Phil Jones incompetence. Anyone bringing me a mode/ mean variance like that upon which Lews conclusions rest would ‘have been made available to the competition’ the same day. And some were.
Sadly, these days you’d just enhance the grant-gobbling potential of the ‘competition’ in the process.
reading comments at PLoS paper itself is enlightening. AW should update that the comment on blogosphere coverage by WUWT and other skeptic sites.
With the Duarte comment now there at the paper, any credentialed scientist who now uses/references this LewPaper has to be considered”warned” that there are serious problems with the data and thus any conclusions.
PLoS has known of the serious data issues, and should be demanding the authors address them or face editorial retraction.
Important observation. lew has known for a year via Brandon. lew and PLOS1 have been on notice since (IIRC) last August via Duarte.. The reason this and like posts are important is that in the absence of correction/retraction, they comprise a clear irrefutable expose of ‘climate science corruption’ in the core scientific literature.
Yes Rud, even Emily Litella was able to clear her mistakes with “Oh. I’m sorry. Never mind.”
Its no surprise to find Lew has not even got the basic design of the study wrong , after all all that matters is that he gets the results he needs , how he gets them does not matter a dam . Bristol University must be hopping like hell that that he does not come unstuck on their watch , while if I was one of his students I demand to judge by his own rubbish standards so I could put any old rubbish in and still pass.
Lewandowsky has discovered the secret to immortality!
He probably has made himself immortal, but not, I suspect, in the way he intended.
āThe Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Scienceā
Please fix the link:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0075637
NOT
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0075637%20
(Please delete this message.)
Why bother checking the data when you have the conclusion you want?
I am a conspiracy theorist and also don’t adhere to the science behind the global warming claim. It’s a better smear to be stuck with than being a Fox News follower!
[But being accused of being a Fox News follower is a compliment. .mod]
Huh?
So please tell us what your theory is about the conspiracy against Fox News.
Itās a better smear to be stuck with than being a Fox News follower!
Explain, please!
You are all wrong. That survey participant was an alien from a planet circling a brown dwarf in a 12 hour orbit.
Looks like someone entered their birthdate , not their age.
March 27, 1957
Looks like a researcher was too stupid and lazy to check the quality of the data for the faux study.
If that turns out to be right, ‘Down to Earth’, then it took only about 80 comments, and less than 4 hours to get the answer. That seems very efficient to me.
Here is Lewandowsky’s older research subject being interviewed:
Just more evidence that Lewandowsky is the shaman of the cargo-cult sect which worships the great and powerful God of Con$piracies.
John
32,767 is the upper bound of a 16 bit integer. Not 32,757, but the similarity is striking.
This is for visual basic. 2 raised to the 16th is 65536.
btw, 32767 is the upper bound of a signed 16 bit integer.
Robust statistics are a wonderful thing. Papers that use non-robust statistical methods (e.g., least squares) should be asked why by their reviewers.
Marginally competent scientists everywhere who are focused on creating exaggerated climate are very thankful to the PLOS Journal and Lewandowsky for lowering paper publishing standards.
John
I’m pretty sure the 32,767 year old is an agw skeptic…after all, he/she was born in the interglacial and has seen the holocene temperatures pretty much the same throughout these last 10,000 years before the relatively recent industrialization.
Born before the interglacial.
My bad…meant ice age…
Actually she was born in the relatively mild MIS 3 interstadial, lived through the Late Glacial Maximum, through the Late Glacial Interstadial, the Younger Dryas and the whole Holocene (including the Climatic Optimum), and the only thing that ass Lewandowsky can think of asking her is if she thinks princess Di was assasinated or not.
I have to Laugh at Lews conclusions, about right wing conspiracy ideation.
Surely an open minded researcher would have found that
Right wing views lead to life expectancy soaring
Male right wingers live 30 years longer than females
1 % of respondants were immune from ad-hom, crom-hom, add-on, nand add, ad-BOM insults
5 yr old Republicans are smarter than the average researcher
toorightmate
January 11, 2015 at 9:47 pm
I am nearing 70 YO and I am a pretty smart old codger.
The bloke that is 32,757 YO must be a bloody wizard.
Richard Tol (@RichardTol)
January 11, 2015 at 9:49 pm
This is deeply disappointing. Lew finds a veritable 32,757 years old, and all he can ask is āwho killed JFK?ā.
Baa Humbug
January 12, 2015 at 12:23 am
+1
Funnnnnnyyyyyy I canāt stop laughing. Thanx Richard.
(And here I thought economists didnāt have a sense of humor)
Yonniestone
January 12, 2015 at 4:45 am Ā· Reply
John Maynard Keynes was one of my favorite comedians, until he became increasingly depressiveā¦..
ref comments jonova
3,4,4,4,4,4,2,2,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,2,3,3,5,5,2,2,3,2,3,2,2,2,2,1,3,2,1,2,1,2,3,4,4,4,32757,2
Is this one of those “which number is not like the others” test?
How much time do I have to figure it out?
/grin
Is the figure able to be divided by nine, if so it is a transposition. One of the first calculations I learned when I started in banking many years ago, when I couldn’t balance till or branch. Example 36 or 63 difference 27 = 9 x 3, easy mistake to make. My local bank today had never heard of it, training or lack there of. I was able to explain to her why she didn’t balance, in a couple of seconds, when I overheard a conversation about “why can’t I balance this teller position”. DUHHHHH!!!!!!!
That transposition test doesn’t require the two numbers to be divisible by 9, the test is whether the remainder when divided by 9 is the same. Or the difference of the two is divisible by 9.
And of course, the 9 divisibility test is to sum all the digits in the number and repeat with the new number until you get a single digit. If that’s 9, it’s divisible by 9, otherwise it’s the remainder when divided by 9.
3 + 2 + 7 + 5 + 7 = 24; 2 + 4 = 6. Not divisible by 9.
And has nothing to do with the issue at hand….
They have a lake upside down in their data, does anyone expect them to fix this?
I have published in PlosOne, and I can assure you, I had to address rigorous peer review questions to get the papers accepted. I have already contacted PlosOne about this paper and told them how outrageous it is that most scientists are held to high standards, but Lewandowsky and the peer reviewers and editor(s) involved convert all of it into a joke. I am more than angry, and if this is not resolved quickly, I will be contacting the Editor in Chief and editorial board personally (face-to-face, if necessary).
Scientists in fields other than climate science really mostly do no know the damage that this one research field is doing by converting science to politics and by throwing standards of science out the window. On the plus side, I would like to assure readers here that other fields are not affected to the degree we see in climate science. When your work may result in the life or death of people or animals whose treatments are influenced by your work, it tends to keep you a little more concerned about validity and accountability.
Do that. And please let us know how it goes.
Because right now, the paper(s) you’ve had published in PlosOne are worthless.
The Journal has lost all credibility and moral authority.
They should have asked about the exploitation of children in the survey (as well as spotting the elderly respondent).
And the fact the journal has no ethical controls is surely worse than merely being incompetent.
I guess you’ve forgotten about Diederick Stapel.
As one of the people who knows the alleged 32757 year old man, I was called upon to validate his age but stopped short of confirming his 32757 years. I’ve only known the man for 26411 years, there’s just no way to confirm his age. He is known to exaggerate from time to time.
Sincerely,
Thag the forager/hunter
Third cave from the stream, near the oozing tar pit.
White rock canyon, next to the big tree.
Homo Erectus welcome if you check your club before entering cave.
[trimmed, vulgar. .mod]
a 9 year old could more competently fake their “data”
Since this is a “climate change study” would you settle for a 14 year old minus a 5 year old?
Thanks, Jo, Eric.
I know it is not polite to laugh at the mentally ill, but the author is not ill, just a fraud.
From the loaded questions to the treatment of the data, this is is a fraud.
That is what you get when you cover-up an initial, maybe unintentional, blunder like AGW; You end up lying, self-destroying.
[trimmed, off-subject. .mod]
Wow. Can somebody see what I am doing wrong. This is unbelievable.
Worrall tells me that Lewandowsky has made a mistake and then he steers me to a website that says with the mistake the conclusions don’t match what Lewandowsky said, and with the mistakes removed, the data matches what Lewandowsky said.
I mean really, can’t you people think for yourselves? Sheesh.
Sorry you can’t follow the article, Pippen. The rest of us seem to have no trouble with it.
Well DB. Please show me the data that indicates that Lewandowsky actually paid attention to the Paleo data at all. Because I think he removed the data and they never paid attention to it. Or he just use medians for everything so the outlier data wouldn’t affect anything.
for Pippen –
— “Age turned out not to correlate with any of the indicator variables.”
This is grossly false. It can only be made true if we include the fake data. If we remove the fake data, especially the 32,757-year-old, age correlates with most of their variables. It correlates with six of their nine conspiracy items, and with their “conspiracist ideation” combined index. It also correlates with views of vaccines ā a major variable in their study. See the graph below.
I smell a rat- a setup. Devious once, twice, easily devious thrice.
How did you like my mock- serious conspiracy theory?
A suggestion: –
The results are real entries by slightly cynical respondents.
Have you ever typed in stupid answers to daft questions?
In addition if you spot a silly ever then probed to see how far it goes?
Plenty of people will refuse to answer personal questions so if there is no escape choice you get twaddle. Bank, earnings, age, gender, political party, weight, loads and loads of these.
My point is that stupidity might explain things. Sense would be excluding outliers from the computation but providing them with the data, together with the reasons why they were excluded.
Stupidity might explain the data entry mistake, but what explains the retention of said erroneous data?
Some people have a sense of humor maybe?
I would love to have a cave woman in one of my papers. One of those feisty cave liber babes, of course.
@Pippen Kool
One must have a sense of humor in order to use erroneous data?
Hmm… I don’t see that as a laughing matter.
First. Scientists have a sense of humor.
Second. If he didn’t use the data if it doesn’t matter.
Third. If he used medians it wouldn’t even affect anything.
You guys are complaining about DATA that didn’t affect the result. So deal with it.
The Pippen fool is being an enabler of bad data, by making excuses. But it’s not funny.
There is no exuse for this blunder, but even more egregious, there is NO excuse for not correcting it by now.
Pippen Kool,
The conclusions are wrong because it included a blatantly false respondent’s age. That is funny, yes.
But it is not a joke made by the author’s of the paper.
The author’s of the paper are the joke – as is the journal – and the peer reviewers.
We should learn who the peer reviewers are. They may be reviewing other papers and pushing more junk science. They may even be allowed to teach!
They should be exposed.
@Pippen
“First. Scientists have a sense of humor.”
Maybe so, but they are not supposed to be comedians.
Second. If he didnāt use the data if it doesnāt matter.
IF? He did use the data, it’s in his paper, in his spreadsheets, his conclusions.
Third. If he used medians it wouldnāt even affect anything.
IF? IF? He did use the data, it’s in his paper, in his spreadsheets, his conclusions.
Sometimes being stupid is funny, sometime not.
How should he correct the case? Leaving out this particilar answser might mean that you have to leave out a true believer of all of these conspiracies. Or filling in an age number that is kind of a normal operating procedure in climate science?p
Well, let’s look at the underaged five who replied, and the overage that replied.
Are they real?… Born to lose ….
CO2-believers aren’t real Never in a million years they are. Faith is one thing Theories of Science an other.
Return to sender every so called study of CO2-believers
until
they climed every mountain
Good luck charm is one thing, but WHERE HAVE ALL THE MONEY GONE?????
From the British Medical Journal on Wakefields Vaccine paper.
On Friday, a morning news show in Australia had some harpie going off on a tangent when talking about some seminars on vaccines causing autism to be given in Australia. She went on to say its like doubting the climate scientists. A pity someone seeking to educate the gullible was unaware that the the original Wakefield paper went through the peer review process without a hitch but failed the test of a single layman being on top of his game.
I cannot remember her name, but she is an American. There are calls for her visa to be rejected. I don’t think that is fair. I feel she should be given airtime in Aus to show how much of a loony she is. The link to autism has been repeatedly debunked. However, as climate change alarmism is rife it Aus, she will have many followers.
“The link to autism has been repeatedly debunked”
the lead author of a CDC study used to “debunk” the autism link came out a few months ago and revealed he deleted data from his study that would have shown a link, and was ashamed he did it. now if there is no link why would the CDC have to pressure the scientists to delete data that showed otherwise?
google “William Thompson” or go here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/27/health/irpt-cdc-autism-vaccine-study/
“Deer shows how Wakefield altered numerous facts about the patientsā medical histories”- this statement has been shown to be bunk. there was no fraud, Deer either doesn’t understand the difference between the “red book” and the GPs notes or he twisted facts with innuendo to create a hit piece on wakefield. Lewandowsky gets published when he clearly shouldn’t because he supports the establishment position, Deer gets published when he clearly shouldn’t because he supports the establishment position. read wakefield’s heavily referenced and footnoted book to establish the facts of the matter. the lesson here is that it is good for your career if you support the establishment and bad if you don’t, pretty simple and obvious really.
I’m grateful Lewandowsky never got a degree in accounting, or in any profession where his work might have real world consequences. Seriously, what a waste of tax dollars on this clown.
For those who want to play with the data set in R — this paper might give you some guidance…
http://www.jstatsoft.org/v20/i03/paper/
Some simple stuff to play with — e.g.:
# ——————————————–
#Once you download and save the data — alter the location to read the data
# 2-Way Frequency Table
PLOSONE2013Data <- read.csv("~/Climate/Lewandowsky/PLOSONE2013Data.csv", stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
View(PLOSONE2013Data)
pl <- PLOSONE2013Data
# http://www.statmethods.net/stats/frequencies.html
pl2 <- pl[pl$age <120,]
pl2 =18,]
# 993 of 1001 rows left
attach(pl2)
mytable <- table(pl2$CseriousDamage, pl2$CYDiana) # A will be rows, B will be columns
mytable # print table
margin.table(mytable, 1) # A frequencies (summed over B)
margin.table(mytable, 2) # B frequencies (summed over A)
prop.table(mytable) # cell percentages
prop.table(mytable, 1) # row percentages
prop.table(mytable, 2) # column percentages
# http://www.statmethods.net/advstats/ca.html
# installed ca library
library(ca)
fit <- ca(mytable)
print(fit) # basic results
summary(fit) # extended results
plot(fit) # symmetric map
plot(fit, mass = TRUE, contrib = "absolute", map =
"rowgreen", arrows = c(FALSE, TRUE)) # asymmetric map
# ——————————————————
fwiw
One line came out wrong… selecting only those older than or = to 18
This line: pl2 =18,]
Don’t forget the minors included in the data. Including the two14 year olds that believed in the moon hoax conspiracy in this paper…
Minors!
“Only participants who completed all items and passed the attention-filter question were retained for analysis. Median age of respondents retained for analysis was 43.0 (Q1: 30.0, Q3: 55.0). There were 501 male and 500 female respondents. The data set is available at the first author’s webpage, http://www.cogsciwa.com“.
My father in law is 90 and now finds it a bit difficult to concentrate.
This 32,757 year old chap is doing really well………apparently he answered the attention-filter question without any problem.
“Funding: This project was supported by funds from the School of Psychology at the University of Western Australia under the auspices of the Adjunct Professor scheme. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”
And nice to see public monies being well spent
Unfortunately the paper is successful.
As propaganda.
The errors were pointed out a year ago with no response. Asking a propagandist to correct errors is like asking beavers to stop hurting trees.
At least including a 32,757-year-old doesn’t raise any ethics rules issues. Whereas the inclusion of a 5-year-old and 6 teenagers under the age of 18 should have rung warning bells. Nice to have further evidence of how closely the UWA monitors such things…
Whether or not the minutiae of a bogus scientific claim is later corrected by genuine scientists is immaterial to the MSM. The simplistic āheadline-grabberā is already published and out there. And as far as the grant recipients are concerned, itās āMission Accomplished.ā Millions have swallowed the bait.
At this point, the only correction that should be applied to his work involves a pack of matches and some lighter fluid.
The errors of their ways are the means to their noble cause end.
That ‘cartoon’ is pretty accurate.
Seriously, does anyone out there want to support a new Lew-paper? The guy lives in his own world. (financed by (you) taxpayers of course) Oh my…
“comments are disabled for this video”
says it all really.
Watch his eyes(!), not ‘Presidential material’ I suspect, when it comes to reading ‘the script’ (Teleprompter). He even talks out ‘of the side of his mouth’, a ‘sin’ that any first year PR droid would have warned him against.
Anyhoo … Would you ‘vote’ for this mess? Would you give up your hard earned tax to fund this mess of a ‘Man’?
3×2,
Lewandowski has no idea how he comes across in public, does he?
I recall a comment from one of his students, when Lew first burst onto the scene:
“Get a bath, you grub.” āŗĀ
LOL! That about says it all, doesn’t it?
Lewandowski has no idea how he comes across in public, does he?
I’m sure that he just doesn’t care. Money flows in from whatever grant agency will pay his mortgage in return for ‘research’ that ‘proves’ that anyone asking questions about xyz is probably some certifiable ‘whack job’ in ‘sci-cology’ terms.
All he has proven to me is that, by and large, ‘science’ is simply another product that one buys when one needs it. No real ‘truth’ out there, one simply buys ‘a truth’ from ones ‘pet scientist’ just like one buys a ‘defence’ from a lawyer.
Sad times.
Gives perhaps an idea what to expect when the column title is Fahrenheit etc.
If he doesn’t talk about the issue maybe the problem will go away .
Well, they didn’t ask me.
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